Readers' comments

Have to mask the real issues and change things around. The signs are clear. AUTOMATION is working. Over the last 10 years the total size of the US workforce according to the BLS has remained roughly the same yet GDP increased by almost 50%. Another point is wages as a percentage of GDP is the lowest in 50 years while labor participation has fallen from 62% to 59%.

January 2000 had 130 million people with non-farm jobs raw number
January 2013 had 132 million people with non-farm jobs raw number

Queue denialist fantasies from people with their heads in the sand. If you were in Moscow in 1991 I am sure you would have been asking "how did this happen". Look around you; do you see $560 billion in growth in America? The US has been stagnate since 1968; ever since Europe rebuilt, Asia industrialized, and the Bretton Wood's System (that allowed America to leech the world's wealth) fell apart. Everything since 1968 has been rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic.

How many factories are there in Silicon Valley today? Have you been to Detroit or Pittsburgh? "Growth" from service sector spending, largely from government spending, like health care, education, and finance is not real growth.

YoungWeber, while I don’t disagree that the metrics have constantly been revised to overstate growth, your assertion is empirically false. Would you rather live in 1968 or 2013? This points out the obvious reality that our wealth has increased, as the poor are afforded services and goods that even the most wealthy could only dream of in the 60s’.

In terms of living standards; if you were/are a "middle class" White male, there is little difference between 1968 and 2013 with the exception of a few new gadgets for sale. From the stand point of economic opportunity, in general, 2013 is worse than 1968. Go back and look at living standards in the US (old movies would help) in 1968; with the exception of minorities, not much has changed.

Don’t worry, this has nothing to do with revising the economic growth of Obama’s term, after all it bakes this new calculation into the entire history of GDP. Wait… How are 50% of these new increases in GDP realized during Obamas term?

I recall Democrats making assertions about alleged partisan advantage when the George H.W. Bush Sr.'s administration did the switch from GNP to GDP.
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Interestingly, I don't recall many political types taking issue with Greenspan or other bureaucracies working on Hedonic Price indices.
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Maybe too wonkish for the usual partisan complaints?

Interesting clip on a rather under-reported news item. So, does the Economist or other posters feel these are legitimate changes?
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Just curious considering the debate around hedonics, which I thought Greenspan liked (hedonic price indices?).
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Also considering past assertions by Kevin Phillips (and recent ones from other quarters) about how inflation seems to get understated, like housing costs, or the focus on "core inflation" (at the expense of food and energy).
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Typically I am not keen on changes. Seems this go-around went through an international body, and hopefully received some rigor and intellectual honesty.

They do, don't they?
Same as having different measures for inflation?
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Thinking of "Table A-15. Alternative measures of labor underutilization" http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
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Chart includes a row for:
"U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force"
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A figure of 14% was estimated for last July.
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Additional definition on marginally attached:
"NOTE: Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule. Updated population controls are introduced annually with the release of January data."